“What time is it?” Apollo asked, just to talk about something else.
“Ten o’clock,” Fabian said. “You got your keys? You need me to let you in? I still got my set.”
Apollo pointed to the brown paper bag on the floor by the couch. “My things are in there. I can get in.”
But he wouldn’t have to. He had an appointment at eleven, downtown, with his parole officer. Another strange thing to be thankful for, but still it was how he felt. Was he supposed to wear a suit to his first meeting with his PO? Would it matter if he wore the clothes he’d slept in, clothes he’d been arrested in?
Fabian nodded and turned away. He had an office down the hallway, past the washers and dryers. He made it five feet before Apollo called out to him.
“How did you know?” Apollo asked.
“Know what?”
“How did you know to come into our apartment?”
Fabian turned back but didn’t move closer. He adjusted his shoulder so the hose wouldn’t slip down his arm. “The man in number forty-seven called me,” he said. “There was a smell.” He shook his head. “It was a very bad smell. I never smelled nothing like it.”
Apollo placed a hand against the couch for balance. “A smell,” he repeated.
“I thought I would need my keys, but the door wasn’t locked. It was real hot inside. I shouted a few times before I came all the way in, but I had a bad feeling, too.”
He lowered his head and scanned the floor rather than meeting Apollo’s eye.
“I found you first. I thought you was dead. For real. Your eye was hanging out.” Fabian made a fist and dangled it by his cheek. “Then I went in the back, and I found the baby.”
The building’s boiler, far off in another corner of the basement, rumbled. Apollo and Fabian remained quiet. Apollo wanted to ask Fabian what he’d seen in that room. No matter how horrible it might’ve been, this man had been in there with Brian. Apollo didn’t want to know a single detail, and he wanted to know all of them. Both feelings at once. But how could he ask? What would he ask? What might he say that wouldn’t seem awful and ugly and perverse? He felt the gaze of the New Dads even from here, and his body flamed with shame.
“I said a prayer right there,” Fabian said. “When I saw him. I say a prayer for him every week at church.”
Apollo nodded. “Thank you for that.”
“I say them for you, too.” Fabian pointed toward his office. “I gotta go,” he said, though the words were choked.
APOLLO REACHED EAST 79th Street slightly early. The building sat on the kind of block made for movies about Manhattan. On a broad street with a grand view running west all the way to the Hudson River. Apartment buildings only twenty or thirty stories high, small and homey by the standards of the island. It took a lot of money to make Manhattan feel quaint. And amid all this sat the Yorkville branch of the New York Public Library, an elegant townhouse and a New York City landmark.
Apollo stood in the middle of the sidewalk staring up at the building like the worst sort of tourist. Old men gave him their elbows on purpose. Mothers used their strollers as steamrollers. He couldn’t believe he had to be here at all, but the Manhattan district court mandated his visit as a “vital aspect of his parole.”
The event space at the Yorkville branch, in the basement, was billed as big enough to seat seventy-two. But capacity wouldn’t be tested this evening. Twelve men and women sat in chairs that had been placed in a circle. Only one of them noticed Apollo approaching, a tall woman who waved him closer. She had the casual authority of a school crossing guard, used to helping the vulnerable and confused reach safety.
“This way,” she called. “We’ve already begun.”
He reached the circle. The others looked at him as he sat.
“I want to welcome you to the Survivors,” said the tall woman as she took her seat. “That’s what we call ourselves.”
Apollo looked from one person to the next. Court-ordered group therapy. That had been a condition of his parole. Thank our progressive new mayor, the judge had told Apollo, unable to disguise his disdain.
Apollo stayed quiet as the other Survivors spoke. It felt a lot like an AA meeting, or what he’d seen of AA meetings on television and in the movies, and more than half of these folks seemed to be struggling with some kind of drug. But instead of stories about the excessive and ugly things they’d done under the influence of this or that, these people were caught in a loop of tragedy. Something terrible happened, but for some reason I’m still here. That might as well have been the subtitle of every conversation. Soon it seemed strange to call this group the Survivors. They were here, but none of them had survived.
“I’m still wearing my wedding ring,” Apollo said, sounding surprised. He looked up at the dozen others in the seats. Now they stared at his hand, too, and he held the ring finger up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
Alice, the tall woman, leaned forward. “That’s fine. Don’t worry.”
“My wife was a librarian,” Apollo said.
Why was he talking? What was he saying?
An older guy with a graying beard nodded. “I saw that in the news.”
Apollo sat upright. “You knew about that? Why didn’t you say anything when I sat down?”
The old guy crossed his arms. “I had a few problems of my own to talk about, you know.”
Apollo actually laughed, a quick, sharp sound.
“But now the floor is yours,” he added softly, more kindly.
“This is my first time here,” Apollo said. “I got released from Rikers Island before the sun came up this morning. I met my parole officer this afternoon. I had to wait two hours before he saw me. And now I’m here.”
They watched him quietly. He found each one as inscrutable as a statue of the Buddha. Alice said, “Your parole officer made you come here on the same day you were released?”
His parole officer actually encouraged him to go home, take a shower, and get some rest. But Apollo asked for help finding a meeting right away. He’d do anything to avoid stepping back into that apartment. But how could he explain all that?
“Yes,” Apollo said. “He’s an asshole.”
A few of the Survivors tutted and clucked. The guy with the graying beard gave Apollo a faint nod that he interpreted as fuck the police.
Then a younger woman spoke, haltingly. “Why did she do it? Did she explain?”
Apollo turned to her, startled. Had they all known who he was when he appeared?
It’s not a baby.
“No,” Apollo said. “She didn’t explain.”
“But why did you do it?” Alice asked this question, the pleasant air of the crossing guard having dissipated.
“You’re talking about the library?” Apollo asked.
“Yes, I am,” she said, leaning backward slightly, crossing her arms.